Moblin: MOBiLe INtel, or MOBile LINux operating system. Targeted initially at netbook to MID devices, though this could be expanding in the future due to its power, speed, UI and Linux-enabled flexibility.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been using the Acer Aspire One KAV10 netbook with its native Windows XP operating system replaced with the latest June 11 build of Moblin 2.0 beta. I’ve had the opportunity to take it for a test drive now and can report on some of its usability factors. I have not done any benchmarking on the device as there are still problems with the OS which prevent a lot of daily active use, let alone installing foreign software.

The device they sent is a small form factor netbook with a 1.6GHz N270 Intel Atom CPU. It has a custom BIOS version 1.03.1585, 1GB of memory (was originally a Windows XP machine) and a 1024×600 screen. Its hardware capabilities include a three-in-one reader, 120GB hard drive, three USB 2.0 ports, a 10/100 Ethernet and audio in/out jacks. The netbook costs $379 for Linux version, $399 for the Windows version, and you can read more about it here. This review is about the Moblin.org’s operating system, Moblin 2.0 beta, officially released in beta yesterday, and is not about the machine itself.

My initial thoughts are: Wow, this could really be something.

Still in beta

Before I begin the review, it should be made clear that this operating system is still in beta. It is of an amazing and unique design, and something that will undoubtedly shake things up in the “Oh no, not Linux” heads of Windows diehards. However, it is still clearly a beta product — and that means periodic errors cropping up through normal operations. None of these do anything other than pop up a message, especially when viewing Flash content (such as on YouTube), but they are consistent and would prevent the OS from being used in an active manner for daily use.

Moblin 2.0 is a Fedora-based derivative of Linux (Red Hat distribution). It’s so unique it has actually become its own animal and could now be viewed as a stand-alone version of its own branch, if not a true baseline for future Linux revisions.

Even though Moblin started out as a Fedora derivative, by this time is so customized that it is clearly its own distribution in appearance if nothing else. Experienced Debian, Fedora, or even Ubuntu users, will recognize many telltale traits of their OS, including its familiar package and update managers. And some hints of the original GNOME desktop are also quite evident in standard apps, though in my opinion are somewhat subdued.

The first official release will be around October, 2009, with a six month cadence thereafter for subsequent updates. This is fairly typical in the Linux distributions, as the open-source efforts compile major changes and release official versions which support everything that’s been rolled out in the meantime as periodic fixes, updates or for security purposes.

The team working on Moblin has not been complacent in their duty to provide us with a powerful new GUI, plenty of attractive eye-candy and fast operating graphical features. Even so, and to address the graphical needs of a full-on Moblin experience, the team realized that more software support was needed than was possible, at least not without digging deep into the innards of Linux and seeing what’s there and what needed to be changed — and that’s exactly what they did.

Major rewrite

To begin with, Intel’s Imad Sousou, director of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center and member of the Moblin.org board, spoke with me about the direction in which Moblin is headed. Additional current members of the Moblin Steering committee include Arjan van de Ven, Matthew Allum and Rusty Lynch. Official information about Moblin is available here.

There is a tremendous re-write of a large portion of the underlying Linux code base that all Linux distributions rely on — the so-called mainline. This includes its graphical system, called X-Windows, as well as many underlying drivers which today affect boot times.

This huge code base is being examined module by module, and then re-written as needed to take advantage of modern hardware abilities and models. In addition, Moblin introduces a “Moblin Core” design, which is a hardware usage model independent layer that provides one uniform way to develop its devices.

This re-write and partial re-design includes reaching out to the original developers and teams at every level. Intel seeks to improve not only the algorithms themselves (by removing old legacy, patched-over code with fresh re-writes), but also to improve the speed with which they execute many basic daily functions which affect us all. They are specifically working on boot-time speed, for example, and internal reports on unreleased code bases indicate sub-10 second boot times for Moblin.

Faster boot times

On the Acer Aspire One (as it is configured today with the standard Moblin 2.0 beta release), from the time the power button is pressed until the machine is up and ready to go is 30 seconds. BIOS consumes 5 seconds, and Moblin boot consumes an additional 25 seconds.

This runs in sharp contrast to the boot times reported by Sousou on their internal builds, which are already in the sub-10 second boot range. In fact, Sousou was quite surprised with my slow boot times. The fastest boot time I’ve seen to date was 14 seconds from post-BIOS screen to being loaded and ready to use.

Experiences like mine are just one of the reasons the authors are looking at updating the code base. Users want much faster boot times from cold starts, and the ability to use their machine rather than spending a great deal of time waiting. And this is something Intel and Moblin.org recognize, and this is a major are of focus or push, toward giving the user a robust, graphical and unique experience.

Different interface

The traditional Linux KDE or GNOME desktop is replaced in Moblin. I’m told the desktop that exists is GNOME-derived, but it bears no resemblance whatsoever to GNOME.

Beginning at the top of the screen is a bar which appears when either the Windows key, or by moving the mouse to the top. It auto-hides graphically, which can honest sometimes be annoying because once you get used to using the device, sometimes you want speed, and having this graphical sequence of sliding down the 3/4-inch from hidden off-the-top of the screen, down to where it’s ready for input, even though it takes only about 1/2-inch second, is just annoying.

The bar shows traditional information, such as the time and date, along with battery status, volume level and an access to networks. In addition, there are eight new buttons which always appear, acting as pictograms for common functions, rather than using written words. This makes its interface immediately usable by any user, no matter their native language, as they go for images rather than words.

From left-to-right the icons are:

Myzone

Status

People

Internet

Media

Pasteboard

Applications

Zones

All of these are shown in lower-case on the ToolTip text which appears beneath the icon when hovering. The icons on the far right are battery, volume and networking.

New Desktop

Myzone is the new desktop — meaning, it’s a replacement. Moblin does not clutter up your desktop with icons and plugged-in devices. In addition, it allows the user to programmatically add items to the Myzone screen as needed. It shows the most recently viewed media, documents or web pages in thumbnail form, allowing for a quick-and-easy return to previous content viewing. This is a big time saver, and is also icon-based, so people do not have to read words to navigate.

Moblin’s GUI

Graphically, Moblin is very well designed. It’s attractive, and uses available space quite well. Everything also has a good default contrast ratio, and colors appear vibrant on both icons and dialogs.

It’s very clear the Moblin design team wanted a powerful visual experience. In all honesty though, I think the team went a little overboard with some of the GUI effects.

For example, every time the mouse is moved over one of the icons it bounces as the ToolTip text appears beneath it. This is extremely annoying to me as a consistent visual trait that appears no matter how fast I mouse over something and click on it. I’m sure each graphical effect takes only about 1/8 second or so, but it is enough for me to see very clearly what it’s doing and was one of the first things I’ve ever seen in an OS GUI that truly made me want to vomit. I mean seriously, it’s like constant motion and it literally makes me feel almost like I’m suffering from motion sickness. Very annoying. A nice feature would be the ability to turn this graphical trait off.

Another extremely annoying trait is the inability to resize many of the application’s windows. As with most applications, Skype for example, comes up on the 1024×600 screen with about a 1/4″ border all the way around the window. And while the window can be moved by grabbing it and dragging it around (even to a near off-screen position), it cannot be resized. This may be a feature of it still being in beta, however it is a very common UI feature that I would’ve thought by alpha development would already have been addressed.

Alt+Tab cycles through open applications in a pleasing graphical way, with a thumbnail of each being shown. In many cases, this is the only way to get to the other applications that are running as in some cases only one application can be visible on-screen at the same time.

External monitors

In addition, if the netbook supports an external monitor (which the Acer Aspire One does), when plugging in to that other display device, the GUI does not modify itself in any way — except to utilize the larger pixel space as usable area for windows.

I’m told by Sousou that there are some divided camps on the OS’s future with regard to appearance, or what some might call “form and function”.

For example, by its very design Moblin is not just for low-power netbooks. It can be used to power full notebooks or even desktop or server machines as it is a true Fedora derivative. Issues regarding this reality are extremely divided right now in the community. The questions go like this: How much (if at all) should the Moblin GUI change when switching from its tiny 1024×600 screen sizes, up to the much larger 1920×1200 and lager monitors which exist today?

Sousou indicated the two camps are divided in stern rigidity right now, and no one knows for sure what the future will hold. Some believe it should change and take advantage of the larger desktop real-estate. Others believe Moblin is first and foremost a netbook OS, and the smaller 1024×600 size should be the standard with everything else just being a bonus.

Courtesy of moblin.org

Myzone

In detail, this area shows the latest applications which have been run, allowing for single-click, or eventual single-touch access. It has a programmable application area, which allows the most-used applications to appear immediately when the OS boots. By default, these include the Moblin media player, web browser (Mozilla-based), appointment calendar, Skype, OpenOffice Writer and a link to AOL’s Top 100 videos (yes, no kidding).

Myzone is a great idea, and is similar in concept to a lot of the features being seen now in web browsers, such as thumbnail previews. In addition, there is a column on the right-side which shows not only thumbnails of recently used programs, but also thumbnails of news items and other feeds which can be programed from social websites.

Status

With a Web Services account, you can update your online status without actually visiting the site. Sites like Twitter and Facebook could be updated through this feature.

People

This feature requires setup that I have not yet completed. I will update this article at some point in the future when I finally get some social networking sites established so I can track people’s movements online.

Internet

This peculiar feature allows you to access your favorites, or type in a URL without actually launching the web browser first. However, as soon as a favorite is clicked or a URL is input, the browser is launched (very quickly, about 2 seconds) and away you go.

Media

The sample Intel sent me was chock full of media content. There were slide shows, images, videos (including Big Buck Bunny), along with a series of “Intel on Moblin” and “Intel on Intel” PR videos.

The media player has a long way to go before it’s ready for prime time. However, the underlying concept of accessing media content is quite brilliant.

An initial launching screen is presented, which allows the single-click launch of media content which is on the screen. This screen remembers your last search settings and presents things exactly as they were when last you closed the screen. A search bar is presented allowing for rapid access to the content you’re looking for.

Accessing images automatically comes in a frame-by-frame viewing format, or they can be displayed in a continuous slideshow. Videos are played through from beginning to end after being selected, unless canceled. However, if you let it finish then a beta-version bug in the current media player restarts playing content at the beginning of all media, rather than at the next item in your search from where you launched the audio or video clip.

The media player interface hides all controls during viewing, and presents an automatic full-screen experience. This has proven to be quite a nice feature. However, again, the beta nature of the OS shows itself as there are recurring bugs throughout which prevent content from being shown when clicked, only heard, the pause doesn’t always work properly, and there is no display showing the time remaining (at least not by default), etc.

Pasteboard

I have not seen any evidence of where this is currently in use. If anyone has Pasteboard experience, please post a message in the comments section. I presume it is a feature which allows for multiple contexts of clipboards to be maintained, but that is just a guess.

Applications

The Applications bar runs in sharp contrast to the rest of the user interface, and I mentioned that to Sousou when speaking with him. He explained that it’s due to the large volume of variable content which is maintained as a traditional Linux user’s access to programs, installing and uninstalling, etc., are made there.

Once clicked, a screen appears which has a series of horizontal bars, each with a drop-down exposing a series of icons related to the category. Each application can be launched from here, and Moblin will prompt you which zone it should be added to.

Zones

Zones allow you to categorize common applications into various areas, making them easily accessible from a single screen. I’m not entirely sure what uses there might be here, except possibly “business” and “pleasure”, or as in emulating the divided desktops which exist by default in Linux (as opposed to Windows, which has only one desktop).

The applications all seemed to work as advertised, except for common beta bugs and the screen size limitations mentioned above.

Pet Peeves

I have a handful of notes that I’m sending to Intel, prompted by Sousou during our call. He wanted me to let him know what features I would change, what I liked and what I disliked. My dislikes are minor issues to be sure, but ones I think would create a better overall experience. The top three are:

1) When no applications are running, the Myzone screen should re-appear automatically, rather than forcing the user to press the Windows key or mouse to the top. After all, if a user is using their PC, what good does it to to stare blindly at the Moblin desktop background image when, after closing an application, there is nothing there to be clicked on due to the new Moblin UI which places everything on the drop-down menu/interface bar?

2) The OS needs, absolutely needs, to resize its interface when moving from the tiny 1024×600 screen to something desktop-sized, like the 24″ 1920×1200 Samsung monitor. It’s a ridiculous concept to consider that someone using this OS would never want to use it on a notebook or larger screen. And when using it on a larger screen, it’s an equally ridiculous concept to limit the experience to the small screen space when so much more real-estate is available.

3) The system needs better communication between common tasks. While it’s great to have a network button on the main status bar, the reality is if you forget to log into a Wi-Fi network before you launch the web browser, for example, it should have a connected ability to give you the immediate option to say “Would you like to go online now?” and then pop-up a dialog box with the available networks. Without this ability, it becomes a series of manual steps to do routine tasks, and this reality is reflected throughout the OS.

There are about a dozen other one-line notes, along with about a dozen or so absolute kudos on several features of design.

Conclusion

All-in-all, I am extremely pleased with Moblin. It is still very clearly in beta as there are errors which pop up during normal use at least once every five minutes, and on some operations several times per minute. Even so, I can see the amazing and tremendous progress and potential in every aspect that I’ve seen so far.

The Moblin.org team has gone to great lengths to rethink the very concept of a user interface, even addressing future technologies like netbook touch-screens, and their effort shows in great regard.

I would have no qualms using Moblin for a netbook operating system, provided it had decent support for plug-in to a full-sized monitor and keyboard. The portability of netbook devices, their long battery life and their feature set makes it a perfect target for a user-friendly Linux-based operating system.

I am very much looking forward to future releases, and will be sure to keep the Geek.com readers up to date on this venture, due out officially sometime later this year (possibly October).